Originally Posted by
ChangingNappies
Unlike in the US, the earthed plug has in France an additional hole and the socket has a prong. In Germany tgere is no prong in the socket, but two side contacts at the top and bottom of the socket. The plug is the same for germany and France. Unlike in the US you can use an earthed plug in unearthed sockets in France and Germany without any adapter.
Tin foil, as said previpusly, is a bad, and potentialy dangerous solution. In Europe, most fairly recent sockets have kid protection shutter that block the holes in the socket. They unlock when you plug in the plug as both prongs apply similar force on the shutters at the same time. This shutter will most probably rip the tin foil from the prongs. It can be dangerous if there is some tin foil that remain inside the socket, and even worse if it partialy sticls out.
in foil is a dangerous.
In my experience, I only had the following issues in Europe:
- the whole socket was loose (partialy hanging from the wall)
- US camera charger without cord was a hanging a bit loose from the EU-US adapter (the adapter was fitting well in the socket).
And as for bending prongs, its easyli done with unearthed ones (partialy on plastic), but good luck with the 4.8mm earthed ones!
Ok fine no foil. Ya gotta give me credit for at least trying to come up with something. Tin or solder. The idea here was to try to find some sort of solution and if one is bad, at least it's getting the brain ticking and hopefully inspiring others to do the same, other than to "just" go buy the next thing.
bending can work but again, it is not something you can do easily and carefully without a tool. I suppose trying to bend something in a door jam might work --Of course bending a flat prong of a US plug is easier than a EU one and yeah the thicker EU ones would be hard to bend without snapping off.
We mostly travel to the Netherlands to see family. I am happy to report I have never had the problem there. And did not have it in Germany last September either. I'll find out if the Le Meridien SPG in Munich has the issue later this month but I shall have my pouch of electronic joy in tow anyway.
I tend to think the northwestern EU countries such as these experience the problems a lot less than others. And of course, any new or updated hotel or facility. I should think any outlet in those countries that comes with that child protector you mention (and we have them in the US too) is new enough to not have the looseness problem either.
`Airports (hall ways with some outlets) usually have the issue
`older hotels would
`cheaper hotels would
`hotels in countries that went bankrupt would
`many planes would too, since in my opinion, they do a lot less to clean and maintain the
interiors of planes than they used to or should... so they can turn them around a lot faster and make more money packing in the sardines for the next flight. A heavily used domestic US plane like a MD88 that hauls you back and forth from say BOS-JFK is gonna be so under maintained you will get lice just sitting in your seat. Forget about bad plugs, if any even exist. I wouldn't expect that route to have them but you get the point. We used what I call a domestic US Delta flight to fly JFK-KEF and then WOW from JFK-BOS. Both had that same feel to me... domestic planes, where the last thing on the minds of the maintenance crew is checking bad outlets.